Shen Wei Dance Arts: Map, Folding

Concept, direction and choreography: Shen Wei
Music: Steve Reich, John Tavener
Light design: Scott Bolman, David Ferri

American choreographer Shen Wei is widely recognized for his defining vision of an intercultural, interdisciplinary, utterly original mode of movement-based performance. As a visual artist independent of Shen Wei Dance Arts, Shen Wei is a painter, designer, and photographer. Director Shen Wei develops an original dance vocabulary incorporating visual and storytelling elements from the theatre, Chinese opera, Eastern philosophy, traditional and contemporary visual art, and sculpture. The result, at turns figurative and abstract, combines performance with strong scenic elements to create a “fascinating fantasy in movement” (Sydney Herald Sun).

In July 2000, he formed Shen Wei Dance Arts with performances of Near the Terrace at the American Dance Festival. At an exceptional, meteoric pace, his company entered the international touring circuit and, for the past eight years, has toured extensively on five continents. For each dance and opera work created with his company, Shen Wei also creates the sets, costumes, and make-up designs. Shen Wei was also commissioned to choreograph part of the Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

In order to create an abstract dance of raw and pure movement, Shen Wei develops techniques to explore the concepts of rotation, bouncing, internal isolation, internal circular, and internal individual movement. Rotation and circular techniques have been introduced in Shen Wei’s previous works The Rite of Spring (2003) and Connect Transfer (2004), respectively, and they are further developed in Map. Within the seven sections of the work, each of the different techniques is explored, creating at first a key and then a map of the movement itself. The seventh section is a collage of the keys, building in momentum and energy to ultimately create the entire framework of the map.

Folding was originally created in China for Guangdong Modern Dance Company. In 2000, the Guangdong Modern Dance Company invited Shen Wei to make Folding, his first work with them since he left China in 1995. During this period, he was strongly attached to the simple action of folding: of paper, fabric, flesh— anything. Folding combines traditional Tibetan Mahakala Buddhist chants with the ethereal melodies of John Tavener. An enormous (16m x9m), hand-painted backdrop establishes a surreal atmosphere, painted with a rendition of an 18th-century Chinese watercolour by Ba Da San Ren.